A M VICTORIAN DECORATIONS

Rock Star Chalkboard Peel and Stick Wall Decal

Rock out to your own tune with this guitar shaped chalkboard wall decal. Applying is easy: just peel and stick. Use it to jot down notes for your next power ballad, or decorate with different colored chalk to create a groovy design. When you're ready for a brand new song, just wipe it all away and start over! And if you ever need to move the decal, have no fear, because all of our Chalkal designs are completely removable and reusable. Border Specs 1 Sheet 27" x 40" Wall Decals and Size 2 pc Approx. Size 18" w x 50" h

REVIEW: PORCUPINE TREE AT THE INDIGO2
20th October 2008

Prog’s greatest hope landed at the O2’s sister venue on Sunday for the last show on their two year Fear Of A Blank Planet tour. Here’s what we thought.

For the benefit of those that haven’t been able to visit it yet the London Indigo2 resides inside the O2 Arena. It’s a compact little venue with decor pitched somewhere between expensive strip club and a theatre straight out of Bladerunner – all neon lights, sparkly floor, metallic grills and shiny surfaces.

And it’s here that we find Porcupine Tree on a mild Sunday evening in the middle of October on the last date of their 18 month Blank Planet tour.

Porcupine Tree have operated for years almost entirely out of the public eye. Ask your average Joe who they are and chances are you’ll get a nonplussed rabbit in the headlights look. But they’re definitely making headway. Tree’s chief architect, Steven Wilson, has been furrowing a path just under the radar of mainstream success for a number of years but, if there’s any justice in the world, it’s only a matter of time before mainstream success finds him anyway.

And if you're one of those people that are yet to experience the Tree, imagine if in 1973 Yes had managed to persuade Tony Iommi to join the band and they had all started wearing black. It’s not hard to see why King Crimson's Robert Fripp rates them so highly. They’re the heir-apparent to the heavier side of progressive rock, bringing together all of the best parts of prog and leaving out the meandering.

The futuristic styling of the Indigo2 is somehow entirely appropriate for the Tree. Despite Wilson initially playing an acoustic guitar, walking around the stage in bare feet, bespectacled and with lank hair, his “protest singer” appearance belies the huge noise that his band make behind him.

After hurtling through the Nil Recurring EP track ‘Normal’ and In Absentia’s ‘Drown With Me’ Wilson admits that this may not be like a normal show before playing the rarely heard ‘Stars Die.’

Another Nil Recurring track, ‘What Happens Now?’ leads onto the epic seventeen minute ‘Anaesthetize’ which is the first time that drummer Gavin Harrison really lets fly. It's worth noting here that Harrison, who is obviously of the school of “why do something simply when you can make it mind-blowingly complicated,” is a drummer of such unbelievable prowess that it’s hard to think of another drummer better than him in the world today.

Fan favourites ‘Open Car’, ‘Strip The Soul’ and ‘Prodigal’ were sublime, while another live rarity, ‘Half Light’ came replete with an amazing glowing guitar.

Blank Planet tracks ‘Way Out Of Here’ and ‘Sleep Together’ closed out the main set, while the encore was made up of Blank Planet’s title track and ‘Halo.’

And that was it. The Blank Planet Tour was over. Wilson says his goodbyes, and we’re told that new material and a new live DVD is on it’s way in 2009 with more live dates to follow and after such an accomplished performance it's difficult to let the band go.

PT are a great band who are potentially on the brink of something huge. They’re one album away from making a real impact on the album charts, if not here then in the US or Japan. US contemporaries, including prog-metallers Dream Theater and Tool, manage huge album sales in their home country, so it’s not a massive leap to imagine PT doing the same over there.

Perhaps the only fault one can draw from the Indigo2 show, and this is really, really picky, is that PT are just too good. Their playing is faultless and the Indigo2’s superior sound system (probably the best in London) is so clear that it means that they sound so remarkably close to the recorded songs that if you closed your eyes you could be listening to them at home (albeit at a very high volume and in a room with several hundred other people).

But for some that may be a positive. One person in the audience was so enraptured that at one point he literally fell out of his seat and there were many, many people that probably felt like doing the same. The music was at times mesmeric, at other times thrilling and almost all of the time beautiful. If you don’t know much about the Tree then you really are missing out and should seek to rectify that post-haste.

The next phase of Porcupine Tree could be an important one. They certainly won’t pander to any fashion, but you just might find that fashion finds them anyway and when that happens the world will be a much better place.

Here’s the setlist

Normal
Drown With Me
Stars Die
What Happens Now?
Anesthetize
Open Car
Dark Matter
Wedding Nails
Prodigal
Strip The Soul
Half Light
Way Out Of Here
Sleep Together
Encore:
Fear Of A Blank Planet
Halo

We stayed one night at the Red Rock Inn where surprisingly, they had an awesome chef and a 5 star menu! This Inn used to be a detention center for prisoners of war during WWII, and has subsequently changed hands a few times until its present reincarnation as a great Inn. Very beautiful and large rooms with antique furniture and decor. Nice place to spend a night about an hour or so outside (east) of Thunder Bay at Red Rock, Ontario.